TDEE Calculator

What TDEE means

TDEE stands for Total Daily Energy Expenditure — every calorie you burn in a day, including rest, movement, exercise, and digesting food. It's the single most useful number in nutrition because it's your maintenance level: eat at your TDEE and your weight stays roughly stable, eat below it and you lose, above it and you gain. It's calculated by taking your BMR and multiplying by an activity factor.

How TDEE is calculated

The activity multiplier is where most of the error creeps in — people routinely overestimate how active they are. If your weight isn't moving as expected after 2-3 weeks, your true multiplier is probably lower than you picked.

Activity level multipliers

Activity level	What it means	×
Sedentary	Little or no exercise, desk job	1.2
Lightly active	Light exercise 1-3 days/week	1.375
Moderately active	Moderate exercise 3-5 days/week	1.55
Very active	Hard exercise 6-7 days/week	1.725
Extra active	Very hard exercise, physical job, or training twice a day	1.9

Worked example

Take the 30-year-old woman from the BMR example (BMR ≈ 1,370) who trains 3-4 times a week (moderately active, ×1.55):

1. 1,370 × 1.55 = 2,124 calories/day

That's her maintenance. To lose about 0.5 kg (1 lb) a week she'd eat roughly 500 below it (~1,620); to gain slowly she'd eat 300-500 above.

Using your TDEE properly

• Be honest with the activity level. 'Moderately active' means genuine training 3-5 days a week, not an active job plus good intentions.
• A deficit of 300-500 calories below TDEE is the sustainable range for fat loss. Bigger deficits cost you muscle and adherence.
• For lean gains, a surplus of 200-400 calories is plenty. More than that mostly adds fat.
• Track your weight over 2-3 weeks, not day to day. If it's flat when you expected loss, lower intake slightly or move more — the estimate needed a nudge.
• Recalculate every 5-7 kg of weight change, since a lighter body burns less.

Frequently asked questions